5 Creative Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

If you build it they will come? False.

The online world is a competitive place. In addition to having a killer website, you also need to update your website with great content. Blog posts are the most popular and one of the easiest types of content to create. But just because you're blogging, it’s not like teenagers are going to flock to your site like teenagers would to a Justin Beiber concert.

You need a comprehensive plan that entails more than simply posting to your blog posts to your company Facebook Page and sending out a few tweets. Here are 5 creative ways to promote your blog content that you might not have thought of:

1. Google+ Communities

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Get on Google+.

If you’re not on Google+, we have a great eBook that can help you get started. In addition to posting your blog post to your company page, you can also add your blog posts to Google+ Community Pages.

If you aren't familiar with Google+ Community Pages, they are basically forums to share posts, ideas, questions, trends and advice with people who have similar interests. You can even set up your own Google+ Community.

I like to add posts and engage with communities from my personal Google+ account, but you can also join and engage with Communities from your business profile.

So what kinds of people are using Google+ Communities these days? All different kinds of people, from runners, to soccer enthusiasts to tech geeks and everyone in between. Some communities have thousands of followers, which means you have the potential to share your blog posts with a great number of people who have already opted-in to learn more about the topic. Here are some examples of some booming communities:

When it comes to promoting your posts on Community Boards, here are some rules I like to follow:

Make sure you’re not just dropping a link. Actually add value to the community.

Provide a micro-post about what the reader should expect in the post.

Make sure you post your blogs in a relevant community.

Make sure you add it to the right topic (Moderators will delete your post if it's in the wrong place).

Be friendly and respond to those who comment on your post.

Thank people for sharing your post.

Don't just promote your own stuff. Comment, like and share other's posts too!

Here is an example of how I do it:

2. Pinterest Community Boards

Pinning blog content to Pinterest is a great way to share your content, especially if it’s an inforgraphic or micrographic. At SEO.com, we create visually appealing images for our blog posts just to fit the Pinterest platform. Below is an example of an eye catching image we will use for Pinterest for this post:

Pinterest Community boards are little different that just posting images to your own Pinterest boards. These boards allow multiple (sometimes 1,000s) people pin images about a specific designated topic. The great thing about Community Boards is that your pins can reach a large audience. For example, SEO.com has 253 followers, but because we contribute to Community Boards with thousands of followers, we’re able to amplify our reach.

The Community Board we created, Everything Marketing has a greater follower number than our regular account. (If you would like to become a contributor to our board, feel free to leave me a comment or tweet @SEOcom).

3. LinkedIn

Some might think of LinkedIn as a place they only go when they need a job. If you think like that you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with professionals and share you content with influential people. Here are a few places you should promote your blog posts on LinkedIn:

Linkedin Groups

Company Page

Personal Page

LinkedIn is a place where people go to share content that they think is valuable and makes them look smart, (unlike Facebook where people tend to share “funny” content). LinkedIn Groups are a lot like Google+ Communities and the same guidelines I wrote about above apply.

4. Quora

I recently wrote a whole post about how great Quora is, and one of those reasons is because there’s a huge opportunity on Quora to establish yourself as an expert through content marketing. Using Quora to research topic ideas for blog posts is a great strategy because you’ll be blogging about questions that potential clients might have. You’ll also have an opportunity to go back and add a link to your post blog post for more thorough information and drive traffic to your blog.

5. Guest Blogs/Internal Blogs

Blog posts ironically are a great way to promote other blog posts. Linking to older blog posts in your newer blog posts will give your posts a new life, plus it’s great for SEO. As a rule of thumb all internal blog posts your write should link to at least one other blog post. If you’re writing guest posts, it’s a good strategy to link to blog posts because they are the deeper links on your page that show Google and other search engines that you’re website is more than just a homepage. Linking to blog posts in your guest posts is also a great way to establish authority on a certain topic, and send signals about the connection between keywords, content and your brand to the search engines.

The side benefit of writing great content is that people will naturally promote it for you and link to you. If you're spending a lot of time on content marketing, hopefully this post gave you some ideas about how to give your content the little extra push and love it needs to get in front of the people who will find it useful, read it and share it.